Cleveland Browns rookie tackle Dawand Jones wants 'the real truth' on love of football

BEREA — Dawand Jones dipped into his basketball past in order to swat away any notion he wished he was playing that sport professionally over playing in the NFL. All that was missing was a Dikembe Mutombo finger wag at the end.

"It was just a crazy tweet," Jones said Friday at Browns rookie minicamp, referring to a post-draft tweet insinuating NFL teams were turned off by his love of basketball over football. "I just wanted to take it in. The question was just different during the interviews. I just feel like it's just writing the real truth, you know what I mean? And I'm not going to speak on it, but it just wasn't right, in my opinion. Just leak something that wasn't right."

The Twitter personality Dov Kleiman tweeted on May 3 that, per MMQB's Albert Breer, one of the reasons why the massive Ohio State tackle fell to the Browns in the fourth round at pick No. 111 was because of pre-draft answers during interviews with teams. Specifically, answers which claimed Jones' dream was actually play in the NBA, not the NFL.

Jones had already clapped back at the tweet and the report it was parroting in the moment. He quoted tweeted the original tweet and said, "False like where do y'all get this information from."

The Browns, both in public and behind the scenes, have insisted those reports never had any bearings on their evaluation of Jones. General manager Andrew Berry has pointed to All-Pro defensive end Myles Garrett as one of many players who have shown you can have NBA dreams and still do pretty well on the football field.

There may be no correlation between Jones, who was a Division I college basketball recruit in high school in Indianapolis, and his NBA dreams and a lack of love for football. However, that doesn't mean there weren't question about the 6-foot-8, 374-pound tackle and his affinity for the sport in which he ultimately is trying to make a living off of playing.

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In fact, the questions weren't just limited to the months between the end of Jones' Ohio State career and when the Browns made him one of their seven draft picks two weeks ago. It started even back while he was at Ben Davis High School and followed him to Columbus.

"I definitely feel like I had to do that a lot in college to prove that I love football," Jones said. "You know what I mean? I got that question asked in almost every interview, do I love football? And I told almost every team, you know what I mean, turn on tape and you can just see it on my film. I play with that anger and aggression, it just comes from the heart. You just don't want nobody to touch the quarterback and that's my main goal."

That love of football was tested on Friday. Jones received plenty of one-on-one attention from offensive line coach Bill Callahan during the roughly hour-long, on-field practice.

The workout seemed to take a toll on a big tackle. He threw up at the conclusion of a drill, which led to a conversation with the athletic trainer and a lengthy amount of time spent bent over on one knee.

Head coach Kevin Stefanski seemed nonplussed about it when asked after practice. He did acknowledge Jones, and the rest of the rookies, faced an eye-opening experience Friday.

"It's true that a lot of young men that go through this draft process, you're not in the best shape, so we know that," Stefanski said. "So it's not like we need to scare them into it. They realize that they have work to do and not all of them do. But sometimes you're in the draft process and you're on the airplane every other day making these visits. So we got a lot of resources in this building and these guys are going to use them."

The good thing for Jones is that he's not going through that adjustment period alone. While he was working specifically with Callahan, he often was in a small group that only included the other offensive tackle in rookie minicamp, first-year pro Tyrone Wheatley Jr.

However, Jones also was joined in the offensive line group by fellow former Ohio State Buckeye Luke Wypler, the center who was taken in the sixth round by the Browns two weeks ago. If anyone understood him, it was his former teammate.

“I know what kind of person he is," Wypler said. "He's a great person, loves football. So for me, I know what kind of teammate he is and what kind of player he is, and the Browns got really lucky to be able to get him.”

Chris Easterling can be reached at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Browns at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/browns. Follow him on Twitter at @ceasterlingABJ.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Browns' rookie Dawand Jones wants 'the real truth' on love of football